Monday, August 22, 2011

1. When you talk about the Carthaginian phalanx, what
exactly do you mean? Do you believe they operated in a similar fashion to the
Macedonian phalanx, or are you using the term to mean a mass of heavy infantry
that fought hand-to-hand with spear and shield?

2. Also, the consul Publius Laverius Laevinius is thought to
have had four legions with accompanying allies at Heraclea in 280BC, so was
there a specific law limiting a consul's command to two legions, or are you
talking about the customary allocation? Of course, at Cannae there were 8 legions plus allies, so
they could clearly change things when they needed to!

A. I have found no evidence that the Carthaginian “phalanx”
resembled the Greek version. By Carthaginian phalanx I refer to a massed
infantry formation equipped with swords versus spears. This is specifically
pointed out by Livy and others writing about the Battle of Cannae. The Punic
center used Roman weapons captured at Trasimene which would not have included
phalanx type spears. Livy goes on to say, “The Gallic and Spanish contingents
carried shields of similar shape, but their swords were of a different pattern,
those of the Gauls being very long and not pointed, those of the Spaniards, who
were accustomed to using them for piercing rather than cutting, being handily
short and sharply pointed.”

At Zama, Hannibal did not use a tightly packed infantry, deploying
three massive lines instead. Again I quote Livy. “Hannibal put his elephants
(80 of them) right in the van of his army; behind them were the Ligurian and
Gallic auxiliaries with a certain proportion of troops from Mauretania and the
Balearics. In the second line he stationed his Carthaginian and African troops
together with the one legion from Macedonia; Then a moderate distance to the
rear of these, came a reserve of Italians and Bruttians.

A. Regarding the two legion army per consul. The time of
Heraclea predated this requirement. I quote from The Punic Wars by Brian Caven
(essential reading for Roman military lovers),

"Imperium – power, and essentially the power to command the
people under arms – was the real basis
of the Roman state. However it had come into conflict with the developing rights
and liberties of the Roman people, and had accordingly been divided among two senior
and four junior magistrates; and certain restrictions had been placed on their
use of it, by custom and statute. Imperium, especially consular Imperium, was
also the object of the legitimate ambition of the ruling class, which was
unwilling to share it among a larger group of magistrates, and also unwilling to
allow the same individual to hold it more than once or twice in a lifetime with
the result that someone else, who as a member of the aristocracy had a
prescriptive right to it, was excluded. Furthermore, in order to prevent the
working of the constitution from being hamstrung, the consuls had to be
prevented from neutralizing each other’s effectiveness and also from poaching
on the reserves of their juniors, the praetors.”

The end result was two consular armies of two legions each
and four praetorian armies of one legion each.